The Christmas Spirit

I spent my Friday off yesterday shopping and lunching with Mum. I took her to T Bar for lunch, tea and turkey talk. We made our plans for Thanksgiving since realistically we're the only two who really care what or when we eat. Mum's making the turkey, mashed potatoes (apparently a mix between russet and sweet), artichoke stuffing (per my request) and brandied cranberries. Chris and I are in charge of the veggies, bread and dessert. I love green bean casserole, but I'm not sure that everybody else does so we'll see what we decide for a veggie.

Since I had a good amount of my sourdough starter, Eduardo, in the fridge I starting prepping him yesterday morning for waffles today. They're so tasty and different I don't think we'll ever tire of them.
The only bad part about them is having to continue to cook up the whole batter all morning. Just because we're done eating doesn't mean I'm anywhere near done making them, but at least breakfast will be a snap tomorrow. Maybe I will make some when everyone comes to visit....

After breakfast we ran out and did some errands. We needed new Christmas lights for this year and a timer, a new smoke detector, the Canadian needed a haircut, and I had photos to pick up from Wal-Fart. When we got home Chris went right to work putting up all of our lights. First he installed some new solar walkway lights along the side of the garage.
Then he starting putting up Christmas lights. Yes, I know we're early, but we're always the last ones on the block to get ours up. But not this year suckas!
We also bought a couple of strands for the back pergola. I've been wanting lights out there ever since we moved in and finally my dreams came true...
We bought all LED lights this year so hopefully we don't see our PG&E bill go through the roof for all these lights we put up. Chris bought two timers, one for the fronts and one for the rears, and set them to come on at 5:30 pm and shut off at 10:00 pm.

If you want to see photos of the front lights in action, look at the Canadian's blog.

I spent all afternoon cooped up in my craft room cranking out Mum's 2010 calendar. Some of the photos I printed at Wally World were for January thru October of the calendar. And I actually finished all the pages today. I just have to take photos at Thanksgiving and probably use Christmas photos from last year, or use our Christmas card photo.

I'm guessing we'll be spending some time tomorrow getting the Canadian packed. He leaves for Macau Monday evening after work. Pack some plaid shirts and plaid shorts so he can impress the natives with his dress savvy.

Party, my house next week!

Hurray for Holidays

Days off for holidays are righteous. Days off that Chris doesn't get are priceless. Mwhahahahaaa!! Not having any plans for today I invited myself along to a site visit Chris had to do in Pleasant Grove (between here and Sacramento). It was the same contractor who'd done the septic system at the hospital so they knew me.
Yeah, I'm working that hardhat.
Four hours in the truck, that's about all I've got to show for my day off. Very productive, I know.

Other than that, other big news of the week is that I finally got my replacement sourdough loaf from my baking class back in June. That would be to replace the loaf I left on the roof of my car as I roared down Pentz Rd. Sherry, my co-worker, had taught another class over the weekend and brought me in an extra loaf.
It was so tasty (not that we're done with it yet). Slightly warmed with butter. Mmmm....

Let's see....we went out to lunch/dinner with the 'rents on Sunday for their 23rd anniversary. We went to Sierra Nevada at their request. Since I'm never very impressed with their food it's always an adventure to pick something off of the menu. This time I chose the chicken thai pizza.
The chicken was marinated in a peanut sauce, there were julienned zucchini, squash and carrots and everything was covered in a sweet chili sauce. It was actually really good. I've had the best luck with their pizzas. They have a mediterranian one that is tasty, too.

I got back to my craft room this week and finished up a couple of more pages. One for the baking class and one for Wilson's 21st birthday. Spirit West Coast goes in between those, but I didn't print the photos yet.


Tonight's bible study night and even though it's a holiday, we're still getting together up at Kari's. She's making us pesto chicken, an apple walnut salad and a crustless pumpkin pie for dessert. But the Canadian's being well cared for too, I through a couple of pounds of beef ribs with bbq sauce in the crock pot this morning and I've got some Marie Callendar's cornbread muffins in the oven and some Busch's baked beans on the stove. He'll be just fine.

Little Porch of Horrors

First I cursed the little devils that stole my Halloween pumpkin, but now I wish they'd taken both of them because Chris' has turned into a Club Med for fruit flies.It is sooooo disgusting (hint, hint to the hubby if he's reading this) and right in our path to the front door. As soon as you get close to it the flies disburse and then come back to continue nibbling on the apparent maple syrup flavor pumpkin. Gag.

As far as non-repulsive news, I received my new New Balance shoes in the mail Monday from the Canadian's friend, Craig (the one going to Macau with him). I just give some suggestions as to which shoes I like, but he has the final pick and it's always a surprise. This time I got pink booby shoes:
See, the inside foot bed is all breast cancer ribbons. And they're on the tongue of the shoe and on the heel. Fuchsia and silver rock. My last ones were blue and silver, but these are better! Ka-pow!

This week is the sustainability conference at Chico State. It's Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Kari and I sweet talked our way into getting to go again and it's been great so far. I mean, there's a couple of keynote speakers that I literally am trying not to fall asleep during, but some of the concurrent classes have been really informative and interesting. I'm actually going to be speaking at a class tomorrow with the Mayor of Chico. Our vice mayor, my nemesis, was supposed to be there, but he had some family emergency and pitched it to me late Wednesday afternoon. Completely too late to put together a power point presentation or really get a chance to meet with Ann, the Chico mayor. But at least I'm talking about the stuff I did at the town the last year for sustainability purposes so it's stuff I know. So after Chico talks about what 'green' things they've done I'm going to get up and blow their little minds. Or bore them to death, I'm not sure yet.

As a parting thought, I want to leave you with this picture:
Really...?!? Who leaves two and a half crackers and crumbs in the box and puts it back in the cupboard? Here's a hint, it wasn't me. Discuss amongst yourselves...

Halloween Haters

Here's a quiz for you; what's the difference between these two photos taken 1 hour apart from each other??

6:30 pm:
and at 7:30 pm:

I was robbed!!! My pumpkin was so awesome somebody just had to have it! I think it was either the 2 year old dinosaur or the group of 6 teenage ninjas.....I'm just not sure....

Oh! There's the door bell! Don't throw candy at them in anger...don't throw candy at them in anger...

Next year I'm giving out raisins.

Halloweenies

There's nothing like waiting until Halloween before carving pumpkins, right? You just can't trust these punk kids in the neighborhood not the kick them in or drop kick them down the street. So, after lunch we laid claim to which pumpkin we each wanted and sketched out our designs. Chris decided this was just the event that called for the use of power tools to cuts the tops off the pumpkins.
Those pumpkins were no match the power of an electric hole saw. Then we hauled them out back and got busy with a steak knife and spoon.
My pumpkin was full of seeds which we saved in a bowl to roast later. Chris' was just stringy inside. A short while later our masterpieces were done.
Since I knew we'd be up answering the door numerous times this evening, I went the easy route and got a jack-o-lantern pizza from Papa Murphy's for dinner.
While the pizza cooked we seasoned our pumpkin seeds. I seasoned my batch with cinnamon and sugar.
Chris did a savory batch with salt and paprika and other spices.
After ten minutes under the broiler, mine looked like this:
Apparently sugar burns very quickly under the broiler. Good to know. I made Chris take them outside because they were smoking up the kitchen. After we ate our pizza I got our candy ready for the little beggars. I have a mix of baby ruths, kit kats, and butterfingers. We'd bought Take 5's too, but we actually like those ones too much to give away.
At about 6:30 it got dark enough for Chris to go out and light the pumpkins. They look pretty good and we've had three trick-or-treaters so far so I guess they're doing their job.
It says 'it's nighttime and look, there's a Canadian that lives here'.

AARP calling

This weekend we celebrated the passing of Chris' youth. We did so by drinking lots of beer, eating fondue and watching football and racing. You know, old people activities.
Since Chris' birthday was really on Monday, I let him open his presents on Sunday so he didn't have to wait all day.
He loved his Mark Donohue book and Allman Brothers CD from Mom.
I just got him boring clothes and a boatload of candy.
Monday night we went to the 'rents for homemade apple pie and presents. They got Chris some tools, beer and a plaid shirt (gasp!).
I didn't do a lot of scrapbooking over the weekend, but I did manage to squeak out two more pages.
Now I need to crack down and get a new calendar put together for Mum for Christmas. She's been hinting at how much she misses her last one.

Poop Class

Friday I accompanied Chris to two job sites, one by Mt. Shasta City and one outside of Redding. The one outside of Redding, in Happy Valley, was at an elementary school. We got there in the middle of their school day so there was a group of kids out for recess while we were checking on their septic system.
"What are you doing?"
"We're checking the system"
"What system?"
"The system where all your poop goes"
"Eeewwwww" (Yet nobody could tear themselves away from the fence)

We had met a local Chico company out there who was actually servicing the system and they agreed, they had never had such a captive audience before. It was the most interesting thing they'd ever seen. They'll be able to trace their prolific careers in wastewater back to this one defining moment.

When we got home I got busy in my craft room to make a birthday card for a co-worker who's birthday is Monday, like Chris'.
I used my new birthday stamps, from Jessica. On the company's website they made mention that these stamps coordinated with the large Fiscars punches, so I picked up the star punch last weekend at Joann's. Perfect cut!

Today was our Fall Festival at church. I had volunteered to help so I was there from 2-5pm manning the ring toss in the kiddie pool.
It you got a ring around one of the floating plastic ducks you got to pick out a stylish rubber duckie as your prize.
Most of the kids were dressed up in costumes and were fairly on the young side.
My friend Katherine was working too, and also wore her finest Halloween shirt.
As a special treat, Chris cooked dinner tonight when I got home. He's been wanting to make some chicken and dumplings so that's exactly what he whipped up.
It was so stinking delicious and he did it all freehand. Unbelievable. Even when I follow recipes it doesn't end up this good. Thankfully there were lots of leftovers so we'll be munching on it again this week. Lucky me.